1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a packet transmission method and apparatus. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for transmitting a packet for use in establishing or maintaining a connection with a server.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the increasing consumer demand and diversity of mobile device applications, use of mobile devices, which may also be referred to as mobile terminals, is growing at a rapid pace. Particularly, smartphones, and other similar mobile terminals, are designed to download the applications from an online market to be installed and executed on the smartphones. Recently, many mobile terminals may execute embedded push applications, for example an instant messenger application or a push email client, or may have the capability to install such applications downloaded from the online market.
Such a push application may periodically transmit a keep-alive packet to a server in order to maintain a connection to a corresponding network service even when the service is not used. A transmission interval of the keep-alive may be referred to as heartbeat interval. With periodic receipt of the keep-alive packet, the server maintains the connection with a mobile terminal.
The push applications installed in the mobile terminal may transmit the keep-alive packet to the server at a predetermined heartbeat interval. In a case where the mobile terminal operates in an idle mode for saving battery power, the mobile terminal may wake up, or in other words, exit the idle mode, in order to transmit the keep-alive packet to the server, thereby consuming high electric current and battery power instantaneously. Accordingly, frequent keep-alive packet transmission may cause a waste of battery power, resulting in reduction of operation time of the mobile phone.
Accordingly, there is a need for reducing a number of wakeup times of the mobile terminal operating in idle mode in order to increase a usage time of the mobile terminal battery. The number of wakeup times may be reduced by synchronizing respective heartbeat intervals of different push applications installed on a same mobile terminal. This method may reduce the power consumption due to the frequent keep-alive packet transmission by synchronizing the heartbeat intervals of all push applications operating in the mobile terminal with that of a specific push application (e.g. the shortest heartbeat interval) selected among them. However, this method may cause a side effect. Although a selected push application having the shortest heartbeat interval is not forced to transmit extra and/or unnecessary keep-alive packets, the other push applications may be synchronized forcibly to the heartbeat interval of the selected push application such that certain applications have to transmit unnecessary keep-alive packet. This means that the keep-alive packet transmission amount increases while the number of wakeup times decreases, which may cause a burden from the view point of the server. That is, the keep-alive time synchronization method may result in a traffic overload to the server, resulting in degradation of service quality. Furthermore, the increased traffic may cause a billing problem in view of the mobile terminal.
Therefore, there is a need for a method and apparatus for transmitting a packet for use in establishing or maintaining a connection with a server that reduces battery power consumption on a mobile terminal and that does not cause a traffic overload in a server.